Speakers in the News »

1/20/06
ELISA CAMAHORT

What is the most effective strategy to employ to grow your online community? Responding to the model of social interaction at sites such as gather.com, Elisa Camahort warns against the "illogic of creating closed networks." She further explains that such networks "almost guarantee you wind up with bloggers who don't have followings of their own on their existing blogs (because such bloggers will be much less motivated to abandon their existing blogs and blog only on your network.) Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to start from scratch and build an audience...but your path to revenue and profit is going to have to be a longer, more arduous one, right? I like something Dave Winer said a while back: 'People come back to places that send them away. Memorize that one.' He contends that those who send people away to cool places on the web are the ones who end up making the money. it's completely counter-intuitive if you're from the school of thought that you get 'em on your site and keep 'em there. But I think there's something there." At the 2006 SXSW Interactivee Festival, Camahort will be participating in the "We Got Naked, Now What?" session which will explore what happens when bloggers mix professional and personal content. She also helped organize the "Public Square or Private Club: Does Exclusivity Strengthen or Dilute?" panel that seeks to address many of the complex community-related issues raised in the above post.

11:22am CST | +

1/19/06
FARUK ATEŞ

Faruk Ates

The blogosphere is still ablaze with reaction to the hype vs. reality Web 3.0 essay from Jeffrey Zeldman printed earlier this week (see the January 18 "Speakers in the News" entry below). We particularly like the thoughts of Faruk Ateş, who posted the this followup column on KuraFire Network, "The real issue isn't whether it's buzz, hype or hell, though: it's what it's all about, and what we're all about. I can't speak for anyone but myself of course, but I am in this field of expertise in order to try and improve the situation of the Web, not toss it back into a loop just to create a new bubble. I've developed a stronger interest in accessibility over the past 2 years because I'm noticing that consciousness of accessibility issues is much more important than almost everything else. My experience with sites is that the accessibility plans from beforehand largely dictate many of the usability aspects, and a little personal research has shown me that the least accessible sites were also the least usable. A bold claim, perhaps, but I truly believe that accessibility is a major part of the foundation of a website or application. Accessibility can influence the overall interface design (it's dictated this site's interface), it influences usability (especially with anything that involves forms), it influences markup - and a better understanding and grasp of accessibility seems to lead to major improvements in all other areas." Ates will talk more about his thoughts on this topic when he speaks on the "Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

09:17am CST | +

1/18/06
JEFFREY ZELDMAN

Jeffrey Zeldman provides a telling commentary on the folly of Web 2.0 propaganda in his wonderful essay "Web 3.0". One of the most experienced and well-respected voices of web design, he argues that public perception of the Internet industry is unduly influenced by the alternating (and generally uninformed) spin cycles of hyped-up enthusiasm and beaten-down depression: "I hated the bubble. I hated it when Vanity Fair or New York Magazine treated web agency founders like celebrities. I hated that mainstream media and the society it informs either ignored the web or mistook it for a high-stakes electronic version of the fashion industry. When the bubble burst, these same geniuses decided the web was of no interest at all. Funny, to me it was more interesting than ever. To me it was people and organizations publishing content that might not otherwise have seen light. It was small businesses with realistic goals delivering value and growing. It was traditional publishers finding their way into a new digital medium, helped by folks like you and me. It was new ways of talking and sharing and loving and selling and healing and being. Hardly dull." After providing Opening Remarks at last year's event, Zeldman returns to the 2006 SXSW Interactive to lead the "How to Roll Your Own Web Conference" panel.

09:38am CST | +

1/17/06
NICOLE LEE

The 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has come and gone. Amidst the massive media attention surrounding the event, one of the most enlightening overall descriptions is provided in a recent blog post by Nicole Lee: "CES is way way way too big. Tom Cruise wears platform shoes and walks funny as a result. Geeks like porn. The size of a television screen is inversely proportionate to how much you can afford or need one. Vegas is a giant ashtray with blinking lights. Always wear comfortable shoes in giant convention centers. Nostalgia for years past is only healthy if you don’t live in it. Bigger is not always better. Smaller is not always better. Desert nights are cold. Press conferences and hardcore hip hop don’t always mix. It doesn’t matter how many names you drop or how much money you make, if you’re a CEO of a company and you disguise your pathetic-ass DRM as “freedom of choice”, you’re an utter and complete tool. No matter how much appetizers you eat at a buffet, you’ll still be hungry for real food. When ordering food in a hotel room at midnight, make sure to not order too much food, because you’ll have leftovers, and you have no way of heating them up in the morning. Foo Fighters ROCK. Cell phone signals deteriorate in the presence of a million other cell phones. Geeks can be arrogant jerks. Geeks can also be the nicest people ever. No matter how pretty you are, you’ll still look ridiculous dressed in a tight t-shirt, a mini-dress, and huge furry boots that look like a hundred rabbits were killed to make them. If you don’t gamble and you’re not into strip clubs, Vegas is boring. Quality is better than quantity. CES is not really for geeks — it’s for capitalistic entrepeneurs who know enough about tech in order to sell it to the gullible masses. And so help me, I’m part of that gullible mass. Also, celebrities do not make for a fantastic keynote presentation — good salesmanship, stage presence, and great products do." Hear more of Lee's insights when she moderate the "How to Blog for Money By Learning From Comics" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

11:09am CST | +

1/16/06
J.D. LASICA

Torrent files of the JD Lasica book "Darknet" are now available online. As the author explains on his blog, "For me, 2005 will go down as the Year of Living Frantically. Between traveling to dozens of cities for my book 'Darknet,' speaking at conferences, and launching and supporting Ourmedia.org, I've had almost zero free time during the past year. (Oh, yeah, I have a family, too.) So I'd been delaying creating torrent files because I figured it would take hours learning how to do it. . . . For my first torrent, it was natural to share all the excerpts from 'Darknet' that I've placed online over the past several months." Lasica will lead the "Darknet: Hollywood’s War on the Digital Generation" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.